Viewpoint Discrimination Threatens Freedom of Thought

CSC senior fellow and ENV contributor David Klinghoffer has a piece in the Washington Examiner detailing the recent trend of discrimination against Darwin-doubters:

A spate of lawsuits and complaints poses the question of whether, in scientific fields, a person holding unorthodox views on Darwinian theory merits being fired, denied a job, or other penalties.

Last month at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, senior computer specialist David Coppedge was fired, having first been demoted. What got him in trouble? A supervisor complained he was talking in favor of intelligent design with colleagues. He is suing.

Or meet astronomer Martin Gaskell, now at the University of Texas, to whom the University of Kentucky just paid $125,000 to settle his discrimination lawsuit. Gaskell presented e-mail traffic evidence from the faculty search committee that he was turned down to head UK's observatory because he wrote on his Web site that unguided evolution has "significant scientific problems."

The surprising thing about these cases may not be that we're still dealing with challenges to academic freedom for those who might be merely suspected of doubting Darwin; it may be the disturbing trend of individuals across a broad political spectrum coming out in favor of the discrimination, even in such staunchly conservative venues as National Review and The Wall Street Journal. Klinghoffer chronicles this trend and what it has to say for "future assaults on freedom of thought" here.